KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

For the sec­ond time this month, a par­lia­men­tary com­mit­tee was abrupt­ly sus­pend­ed, with Guardian Me­dia un­der­stand­ing the is­sue was the pres­ence of em­bat­tled Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates.

Rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Min­istry of Jus­tice, the Po­lice Ser­vice and the Ju­di­cia­ry were al­ready seat­ed for the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s as­sess­ment of the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (Elec­tron­ic Mon­i­tor­ing) Act, 2012.

The meet­ing, sched­uled to be­gin at 1.15 pm, moved in­to an in-cam­era ses­sion where sources said com­mit­tee mem­ber Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ob­ject­ed to John-Bates’ con­tin­ued par­tic­i­pa­tion, cit­ing con­cerns over her con­duct dur­ing a Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) meet­ing ear­li­er this month on the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals.

JSC chair­man Sad­dam Ho­sein lat­er took his seat and an­nounced that the meet­ing would have to be ad­journed.

“A mat­ter has arisen, which was brought to our at­ten­tion, and we can­not con­tin­ue this meet­ing this evening; so we will have to sus­pend this hear­ing of this par­tic­u­lar meet­ing. We are ad­journ­ing to a date to be fixed, and we will have to com­mu­ni­cate with you on the date that we have ad­journed to,” Ho­sein said.

Dur­ing a PAAC meet­ing on April 13, chair­man Jagdeo Singh al­so an­nounced the ad­journ­ment of pro­ceed­ings, stat­ing, “Some­thing quite re­gret­table has oc­curred that com­pels this Com­mit­tee to ad­journ these pro­ceed­ings.”

Singh said the de­ci­sion was re­gret­table but un­avoid­able. The in­quiry in­to the State’s ac­qui­si­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals has fo­cused on the process­es gov­ern­ing im­por­ta­tion and ap­proval. Ear­li­er sit­tings found ev­i­dence of al­leged weak­ness­es in the sys­tem for is­su­ing spe­cial im­port per­mits to phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, as well as the ab­sence of a pub­lic list of ap­proved phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals al­lowed to en­ter T&T.

For­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh was lat­er in­vit­ed to sub­mit ev­i­dence, fol­low­ing a num­ber of al­le­ga­tions raised dur­ing the com­mit­tee’s meet­ings, in­clud­ing claims that he pres­sured the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Prop­er­ty De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (Nipdec) to grant pref­er­en­tial pay­ment to a ma­jor phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny.

Chair­man Singh ac­knowl­edged the in­creased pub­lic in­ter­est in the pro­ceed­ings and apol­o­gised to the pub­lic for the ad­journ­ment, which was set to re­sume on April 27.

Ac­cord­ing to the PAAC Spe­cial Re­port, a doc­u­ment sub­mit­ted by Deyals­ingh on April 8 con­tained tracked changes that were traced back to John-Bates. Meta­da­ta fur­ther sug­gest­ed she may have as­sist­ed in draft­ing the mem­o­ran­dum pri­or to a key com­mit­tee meet­ing held on March 25.

The Spe­cial Re­port was signed by all com­mit­tee mem­bers ex­cept Op­po­si­tion MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who sub­mit­ted a Mi­nor­i­ty Re­port, rais­ing con­cerns about the com­mit­tee’s han­dling of the mat­ter and the leak of in­for­ma­tion.

The PNM sub­se­quent­ly wrote to Par­lia­ment in­di­cat­ing its de­ci­sion to re­move John-Bates from the PAAC. She was re­placed by Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Vish­nu Dhan­paul.

John-Bates is ex­pect­ed to meet with po­lit­i­cal leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les to re­spond to the de­vel­op­ments to­day. Beck­les is ex­pect­ed to de­cide on John-Bates’ fate af­ter that meet­ing, Beck­les con­firmed yes­ter­day at the PNM’s State of the Re­pub­lic meet­ing at City Hall, Port-of-Spain. When pressed about the is­sue at the event, John-Bates re­fused to re­spond.